


The Twins

by Chitra_Rive



Category: Once Upon a Time (In Space) - The Mechanisms (Album), The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: (re: previous- not sure of specific warnings), Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Missing Scene, Morbidity, evil science!, technically rose is there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 19:02:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29987418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chitra_Rive/pseuds/Chitra_Rive
Summary: Hansel theorizes.(Or: What's with the discrepancy between the characterizations in the fiction and the narration track?)Written for day one of Mechs Album Week!
Relationships: Gretal & Hansel (Once Upon A Time In Space)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12
Collections: Mechs Album Week





	The Twins

**Author's Note:**

> this borrows a lot from the fictions 'gingerbread' and 'by any other name'; you don't have to read them, but there's a lot of context there you'll miss otherwise!

Hansel was pacing, and had been for the last hour. 

“Brother dearest,” Gretel said, because other people found it unnerving when she called him that and smiled in that way of hers that looked all too strange on a fourteen year old, “you’ve been acting odd lately.” 

“I was surprised! I thought we’d be notified.” He reached one of the lab walls, turned on his heel, and walked back. “Smart move, though. Smart  _ man.  _ I don’t particularly like people more intelligent than me, sister dearest.” 

“Count yourself lucky I haven’t upstaged you.” Gretel grinned. “Yet.” 

Hansel didn’t laugh. His attention was off somewhere else. “There’s something else. Why would King Cole go to us?” 

“He didn’t even let me do my plan,” she complained, jumping up onto their long drafting table. “No pain, no fear! He’s wrong about whatever he was saying about them being  _ vital tools  _ or whatever, I know  _ I  _ wouldn’t want pain or fear and the way we thought up to neutralize those areas of the brain was so good! We spent ages on it! And I was excited to implement it but now we’re never gonna get to test it unless we can find someone we don’t like!”

“We still have the doctor in your room and our parents in the cupboard,” Hansel pointed out, kicking said cupboard in demonstration. “Haven’t you been using them to run trials on human components?” 

“Components?” Gretal mocked, and then, “I’ll give that a shot! Corpses can only get you so far, though; the big thing with Rose is that she’s still alive in there.” She walked over to the pod they’d put in the observation chamber and rapped on the glass. There was a tiny flinch from Rose- almost imperceptible, but there. 

Hansel grew curter at that. “Back on the subject, sister dearest, I don’t understand this, and I don’t  _ like  _ it. We have no reputation at all, given that I’ve covered our tracks in case we’re prosecuted for murder. Even with a deep dive, assuming I’ve missed things, which I don’t believe I’m capable of, we weren’t important. All he would get is that we appeared from out of the blue seven years ago when we killed one of his scientists. Not to mention, it’s still forty-three days before I turn eighteen. Neither of us are even of age, and New Constantinople society still insists on putting an arbitrary amount of social standing on that, ignoring- or rather,  _ taking into account- _ that plenty of species aren’t as long lived as them. It makes no sense for King Cole to hire us when he has plenty of his own people.” 

“What’re you thinking?” Despite how she joked about beating him in intelligence, Hansel was always the one who could put the pieces together the quickest; or had become that one, anyhow. 

“I’m thinking he’s hiding something. I’m still figuring out what. It makes no sense for it to be the production itself. We’re making super-soldiers. It would be smartest to deploy them everywhere and openly, and I trust King Cole to know that’s a good move. So that’s not what needs to be covert.” He stopped pacing suddenly. “Wait. What if something happened that made him no longer trust his own scientists?” 

“Like?” Gretel was just as curious to learn what conclusion he was coming to as he was anxious to discover it. 

“Like a  _ failed attempt.  _ Remember what he told us when he first gave her to us to experiment with?” 

“Nope. It was ages ago.” 

“It was a week ago.” 

“ _ Ages.”  _

Hansel sighed and buried his face in his hands, a hidden fond smile visible between his fingers. “He instructed us specifically to wipe her memories. Perhaps that happened to you and it’s why you can’t recall even the most basic things.” 

“I was too busy thinking about the things I could do with a living human in stasis to listen to him. We can’t all have superhuman recall.” 

“No, I suppose we can’t. But anyhow. When he told us that, I remember it was… odd. He was so  _ insistent.  _ He didn’t trust us at all. Of course, he’d told us that she consented, which I wouldn’t believe for a second.” 

“Of course,” said Gretel, who had never given it much thought. 

“There are already rumors of a ‘wedding day massacre’. Her sister is looking for her. She was kidnapped.” 

“I didn’t know she had a sister.” 

“They’re hard rumors to find. General White is good at keeping secrets from her enemies, which includes us.” He paused. “She doesn’t know anything about us, though, and presumably also is unaware that Rose is here. That could be another reason- no, he could hide Rose from her well enough with his people.” 

“Keep going with your theory,” Gretel prompted. 

“What if the previous iteration of Rose Reds failed because they allowed her to keep her memories? And then that failure had to be hushed up, so he went to us, knowing we wouldn’t make the project known because of risk to ourselves, and keeping files unofficial and out of Crown records.”

“That makes sense!” Gretel clapped her hands in excitement. “And it’s  _ interesting,  _ too. I wonder what happened to the previous scientists.” She could daydream about all  _ sorts  _ of possibilities. “Maybe Rose killed them!”

“I need to do more research to confirm this idea. Maybe you’ll find out.” 

“What’re you planning on doing once you do know it’s right?” 

She meant it innocently, but Hansel stopped stiff in his tracks for a second. “I’m unsure.” He started pacing again. “Having information is always a positive, isn’t it?” 

She knew that look. “You can tell me if something’s bothering you. I’ll fix it.”

“I’m afraid there’s nothing for you to stab this time, sister dearest.” 

“Are you  _ sure?  _ I’ve been collecting weapons.” Neither of them were joking. She had killed for him three times over, and would do it again and again and again if anyone else tried to hurt them. She wasn’t sure what to do if it wasn’t that, though. Emotions had never been either of their strong suits, and Hansel was better at them than she was. 

“This just feels wrong. I would have had no qualms about this before, but, well…” She’d never known Hansel to be inarticulate in anything but the most dire of circumstances before, but here he was stammering in front of her now and in front of King Cole earlier today. “Experimenting on a live subject, here, with a sibling searching for them, doesn’t feel right.” 

Gretel stood up, looked around the lab. It was the logical place for them to stay; objectively, it was perfect. There was plenty of space and all the tools and supplies they could want. Hansel had even realized there must have been living space nearby very early, back in their captivity, when Gretel had accidentally made a clatter in the middle of the night when she’d thought no one was about. He’d said, later when she was sitting hurt and shivering up against where he was being held at the time, that Doctor Totenkinder must have been close enough to hear it, and when she was dead they’d found her apartment behind a locked door in the back of the lab and lived there from then on. 

But it was true that the lab had the tendency to set both of them off. She’d lose sight of Hansel for a minute and suddenly feel dizzy, stifled, like the air of the lab was all too stale. Already in the past week she’d been offput by the fact there was someone else in the observation chamber, losing her hold on the fact that it was Rose and not her brother when she saw it out of the corner of her eye. 

Unlike Hansel, though, she didn’t see any kind of solution in fixating on it. Hansel was the one with a conscience, a need to rationalize his more morally ambiguous decisions with a logical explanation. Gretel didn’t care about Rose, or General White. She cared about  _ him,  _ and their continued survival and freedom. “Dear brother, even if it doesn’t feel right, we’ve taken this job now, and if we go back on it King Cole will likely kill us. Or worse. We can’t be under his power again. Besides-- you wouldn’t begrudge me an experimental subject, would you?” 

“I suppose I wouldn’t. And it’s true there are some things I’ve been… wanting to try myself.” He smiled at her, a purposeful mirror of her own grin and a signal of the return to the status quo. 

Gretel recalled one of her first memories, her as a very young child sitting next to Hansel as he pulled the wings off of a fly, describing to her the principles behind flight while it buzzed and struggled to get away. They had always been like this; the moral qualms were the unnatural piece, not the ruthlessness. Never mind how Gretel now kept her most lethal poisons tucked into her pocket, or how her steps to examine Rose were unconsciously mirroring Doctor Totenkinder’s as part of her attempt to reassert herself after her discussion with her brother. There was no reason to linger; there was work to be done. 


End file.
